Macworld vs. CES: Macworld Emerges as Victor: Analysts

Tuesday, 16 Jan 2007 | 2:57 AM ETReuters

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The company making the biggest splash at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week was not even there: Apple, which debuted its highly anticipated multimedia iPhone at its Macworld show.

More than 140,000 people descended on Las Vegas for the nearly week-long annual tech-fest where Microsoft co-founder and Chairman Bill Gates kicked off the festivities with his keynote speech.

Thousands of products debuted and thousands of companies set up booths at CES this past week.

CES is a sprawling event that takes over the city's convention center and many of Las Vegas' largest hotels, and is the biggest annual trade show for the $145 billion consumer electronics industry.

Meanwhile at Macworld

A few hundred miles northwest in San Francisco, Apple Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs announced the iPhone to about 4,000 reporters, analysts and Apple employees here at its annual Macworld show.

Jobs pulled the iPhone from his pocket, gave a lengthy demonstration of the device, and earned a standing ovation at the end.

"The astounding thing is that Apple announced basically two products and they got, I think, more buzz announcing two products than CES did for launching thousands," said Gartner analyst Van Baker.

In one meeting at CES, an analyst receiving an email turned to colleagues and whispered, "iPhone." Several nodded knowingly: Apple had finally announced the device.

The device, thinner than Motorola's trend-setting Razr, makes phone calls, is an iPod music player and offers a browser to surf the Internet. The half-inch-thick iPhone has a 3.5-inch touch-screen, a "virtual" keyboard and only several buttons.

Apple's iPhone is slated to go on sale in June and costs $499 or $599, depending on how much memory is in the device to store music, videos, pictures and other content.

Gadgets at CES

Among the gadgets unveiled at CES were Samsung's combination Blu-Ray DVD and HD-DVD player, handsets from Qualcomm that can carry live television and others, wrote Cowen technology strategist Arnie Berman in a note to clients.

Still, "the coolest thing to be announced this week was Apple's iPhone - with Macworld upstaging CES," Berman wrote.